DRUMMONDVILLE, QUE.—One issue above all faces Quebecers as they prepare to vote in the cliff-hanger provincial election on Tuesday, says businessman-turned-politician François Legault.

“Do you want a referendum to move Quebec out of Canada — yes or no?” Legault told some 500 cheering supporters gathered in a hotel ballroom on Saturday, all of whom seemed securely in the “no” camp.

Briefly breaking into slightly laboured English, the one-time separatist peered straight at the TV cameras and said a vote for the front-running Parti Québécois would be a vote for another referendum on Quebec independence, while a ballot cast for his party, the Coalition Avenir Québec, now ranked in second place by recent opinion polls, is the only means of avoiding another divisive and agonizing battle over Quebec’s future — in or out of Canada.

“Only the Coalition is in a position to block a referendum,” he said, dismissing the PQ and its leader Pauline Marois as “extremist radicals” who do not represent most Quebecers.

Some 70 per cent of Quebecers say they do not want a referendum, Legault said, as spirited supporters cheered and clapped their approval and while his party’s candidates for the 125 seats in Quebec’s National Assembly looked on from the stage behind their leader.

With his newly minted party trailing the PQ by only a few percentage points, Legault is seeking to vault the CAQ into contention for power, capping a rapid political ascent that has taken many Quebecers and more than a few experts by surprise.

Earlier Saturday, Legault said the PQ is “living in an imaginary world” that is “disconnected” from the domain where most Quebecers dwell.

“If Mrs. Marois really loved Quebec, she wouldn’t put us in total division with a new referendum,” Legault said during an outdoor press conference in Saint-Ferdinand, an economically embattled town about 70 kilometres southwest of Quebec City. “It would be irresponsible to trigger a referendum now.”

Legault vows to put the question of Quebec separation on ice for at least 10 years and to govern without taking a position for or against a sovereign Quebec.

“We have the competence to make a change,” Legault said Saturday, repeating his campaign promises to provide a medical doctor for every Quebec family within a year while also halting the province’s “economic stagnation.”

He said the PQ’s separatist ambitions would only cause uncertainty, further clouding Quebec’s financial outlook.

“I think they live in an imaginary world, a parallel world to the one where most Quebecers live,” he said. “The Parti Québécois is truly disconnected.”

Legault’s prospects received an additional nudge from an unexpected source Saturday when The Gazette, Quebec’s largest English-language newspaper, handed his fledgling party a begrudging but nonetheless clear editorial endorsement A former airline executive who served as a senior cabinet minister in a previous PQ government, Legault welcomed the newspaper’s backing, saying it affirmed his goal of uniting Quebecers of all linguistic backgrounds behind his mission to “clean up” what he describes as the province’s financial and social malaise.

Wearing brown shoes, a shiny grey suit, and an open-collared shirt, Legault attracted enthusiastic if not exactly massive weekend crowds in several central Quebec communities on a day of perfect late-summer sunshine. Many supporters cheered and clapped as he walked about, shaking hands and trading quips in Saint-Hyacinthe, Drummondville, and L’Assomption.

Seeming relaxed and confident, Legault aimed nearly all his rhetorical barbs at his former party, the nationalist PQ, accusing Marois of harbouring a “hidden agenda,” that would poison all her dealings with the federal government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

He also urged Quebecers to consider whether a PQ government would be able to fill major economic portfolios with competent, experienced businesspeople, the sort of candidates he claims to have in abundance.

But the PQ’s Marois contested those claims.

“François Legault is not at all ready to govern,” she said during a news conference Saturday in Chateauguay.

“Mr. Legault has identified five or six people who will be in his cabinet but he needs to be reminded that these people must first be elected. It’s something he hasn’t done yet, and it’s far from being done in many ridings.”

In Saint-Ferdinand, framed by the six-storey, red-brick hulk of a former hospital that has stood empty since being closed down nine years ago, Legault depicted the building as a symbol of the province’s decline under the ruling Liberal Party.

Prior to its closing, the hospital had been the town’s main employer, and Saint-Ferdinand has struggled financially ever since.

Other than that veiled reference, however, Legault spent the day studiously ignoring the Liberals and their leader Jean Charest, whose party has slipped into third place in recent polls and seems headed for a painful defeat on Tuesday.

Perhaps in anticipation of that result, and in hopes of picking up wavering Liberal support, Legault framed the electoral contest as a two-horse race, presenting just two options for Quebec voters, the “irresponsible” PQ and his own upstart CAQ, which he presents as a competent and pragmatic alternative.

During a full day of campaigning Saturday, the 55-year-old Legault did not once publicly mention Charest or the Liberals by name, even though he holds only a slender advantage over the federalist party that has ruled Quebec for the past nine years but whose welcome has probably worn out, owing to corruption rumours and the curse of ruling for what may be too long.

With files from Allan Woods

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